A functional, comfortable, and swift means to type for gamepad players is needed. Regardless if there is a voice chat option or not. You can still play with other people without communicating in exhaustive or elaborate sentences. Forcing any type of communication is not always optimal. This is why you see the /blacklist option in XI, the mute button on xbox live or players choosing not to join guilds who require ventrillo, etc.

Xbox gampepad keypad add on is recognized as a keyboard in windows. Therefore it should allow you to type directly from the gamepad. Problem = Solved

Um you talking about that tiny little add on? Sure if every player has papa smurf hands.

It looks bigger and easier than texting on a cellphone?

____________________________

The entire Universe to the furthest Galaxy, we are told, is no more than a closed electron existing as part of a much bigger Universe we can never see. And that Universe is only an elementary particle in a still grander Universe. An infinite regression, up and down. - Carl Sagan

Never confuse your inference as the listener for an implication of the speaker.

Good games are subjective like good food is subjective. You're not going to seriously tell me that there's not a psychological basis for why pizza is great and lutefisk is revolting. The thing about subjectivity is that, as subjects go, humans actually have a great deal in common.

Off topic sorta but.....I like how most MMOs players are like "I would NEVER use a controller" and are coincidentally creating a market of more intricate and complex "keyboards" for playing an MMO with more speed and dexterity, slowly but surely replacing the keyboard and mouse set up with a.....controller (of sorts) ?

The entire Universe to the furthest Galaxy, we are told, is no more than a closed electron existing as part of a much bigger Universe we can never see. And that Universe is only an elementary particle in a still grander Universe. An infinite regression, up and down. - Carl Sagan

A functional, comfortable, and swift means to type for gamepad players is needed. Regardless if there is a voice chat option or not. You can still play with other people without communicating in exhaustive or elaborate sentences. Forcing any type of communication is not always optimal. This is why you see the /blacklist option in XI, the mute button on xbox live or players choosing not to join guilds who require ventrillo, etc.

People are different from each other. Some are nice, some are courteous, some are perverts, some like to cuss, some are violent, some are funny, some are rude, some have very loud voices, and some just have annoying voices. Any person can cycle through those moods at anytime and cause more distraction than vital communication. I play with people sometimes typing, sometimes voice chat, and sometimes I don't communicate at all. Options good, required bad..

How could XIV give players more options? No faster GCD required unless there is heavy environmental/positional awareness focus while activating skills or a skill modifier button. -An intuitive marking system for use with player communication or enemy marking. -A gamepad/kb hybrid with a full size qwerty keyboard -A return of a queue feature for skills(allows typing while basic commonly used skills fire off) -An enhance chat/macro feature for communicating

What are some your ideas?

Mainly, I think if mmos are going to continue releasing on consoles. Someone needs to develop an intuitive mmo/gamepad/keyboard hybrid. That is the main thing I see not eating up bandwidth and placing gamepad and keyboard users on more level ground imo.

The marking system is already in place, and is quite handy. During Tam Tara Deepcroft, there is a particularly large group of mobs you need to get through and killing them in order (having everyone on the same target) is very desirable. Before charging in the party leader can mark them and everyone in the party can see the marks. I know there are plans to expand this as well.

I haven't--that looks sort of similar to typing with a controller via input combinations (which I wish more PC games would utilize as it's a very familiar system to console gamers and much better in general). The flexibility of the peripheral is... interesting.

Another option would be wrist-mounted keyboards, like something you'd see in a scifi movie. Less optimal to combine with a gamepad, but a great hands-free keyboard option in general. You'd have, say, the left-hand keys mounted under your left hand, as supported by the wrist, and then the right-handed keys would be on top of your left wrist. You'd have full keyboard control just placing your right hand over your left arm. It would require some clever engineering to prevent the lefthand keypad from interfering with gamepad gripping, though. Especially so if mounting the gamepad to the keyboard.

Lots of great options that man has yet to explore, which is just sad given our abilities for manufacturing technology.

Never confuse your inference as the listener for an implication of the speaker.

Good games are subjective like good food is subjective. You're not going to seriously tell me that there's not a psychological basis for why pizza is great and lutefisk is revolting. The thing about subjectivity is that, as subjects go, humans actually have a great deal in common.

Never confuse your inference as the listener for an implication of the speaker.

Good games are subjective like good food is subjective. You're not going to seriously tell me that there's not a psychological basis for why pizza is great and lutefisk is revolting. The thing about subjectivity is that, as subjects go, humans actually have a great deal in common.

That would be a mistake, too. Computer nerds in particular often have vast disposable income for peripherals and a fondness for anything purported to be next-gen. Look at how much they spend on otherwise "normal" peripherals.

These ideas don't even require any new tech. It's just a more ergonomic package of the same old.

Never confuse your inference as the listener for an implication of the speaker.

Good games are subjective like good food is subjective. You're not going to seriously tell me that there's not a psychological basis for why pizza is great and lutefisk is revolting. The thing about subjectivity is that, as subjects go, humans actually have a great deal in common.

That would be a mistake, too. Computer nerds in particular often have vast disposable income for peripherals and a fondness for anything purported to be next-gen. Look at how much they spend on otherwise "normal" peripherals.

These ideas don't even require any new tech. It's just a more ergonomic package of the same old.

The marking system is already in place, and is quite handy. During Tam Tara Deepcroft, there is a particularly large group of mobs you need to get through and killing them in order (having everyone on the same target) is very desirable. Before charging in the party leader can mark them and everyone in the party can see the marks. I know there are plans to expand this as well.

I am very interested to see how they expand upon this. Seems great, have you offered any feedback to the development team on ways you would like to see this expanded?

I stick by my guns from previous post. I feel that an mmo/gamepad/keyboard hybrid modeled around the premise of the Wii-u controller would be best. The touchscreen is something alot of people are familiar with these days. It wouldn't require some revolutionary new design or feel foreign to the masses like a chorded keyboard or some finger twisting aparatus.

Just have some mode switching selector UI at the the top of the touchscreen to switch between a qwerty interface, mouse pad functions for drag and drop, etc, etc. From what I have heard the Wii-U is moderately light and comfortable to hold. If they want to stay away from adding a touchscreen. Then at the least slap on a normal keyboard type qwerty and a small touchpad like laptops have.

That would be a mistake, too. Computer nerds in particular often have vast disposable income for peripherals and a fondness for anything purported to be next-gen. Look at how much they spend on otherwise "normal" peripherals.

These ideas don't even require any new tech. It's just a more ergonomic package of the same old.

I disagree, I don't think there is nearly enough demand for this.

I think you overestimate the necessary threshold for demand. Worst case scenario, do a Kickstarter/Indiegogo and gauge the demand up front with minimal startup cost.

Never confuse your inference as the listener for an implication of the speaker.

Good games are subjective like good food is subjective. You're not going to seriously tell me that there's not a psychological basis for why pizza is great and lutefisk is revolting. The thing about subjectivity is that, as subjects go, humans actually have a great deal in common.

Never confuse your inference as the listener for an implication of the speaker.

Good games are subjective like good food is subjective. You're not going to seriously tell me that there's not a psychological basis for why pizza is great and lutefisk is revolting. The thing about subjectivity is that, as subjects go, humans actually have a great deal in common.

Voice coms are starting to be more and more needed from what i've seen. I remember back in the day in wow that we would only log in ventrillo for the raid and then log out the minute we won the raid. Almost no chit chat there a simple hi and get this thing on the road. I must admit that i didn't really like the voice coms much and its true that i preferred to use text chat when playing out of raids.

That all changed when i started playing EvE online. Its almost unthinkable for a corporation (guild/clan/ls) to not have a voice com. My corporation has one then my alliance has another one and at the end my coalition has a different one ( coalitions are basically an alliance of alliances numbering to thousands of players). Coms are basically mandatory there for various reasons. Eve made me re think the whole voice chat thing to be honest. If you are form the players that get on an ls and stick with those people for a long time, voice chat will band you together and will make playing, way more enjoying than usual. After 1 and half year with the same corp in EvE we have facebook page, phone numbers exchanged and some of us that are close go and get drunk together. My point is, if you find a good bunch of people voice coms will really make you have an even greater time.

That all changed when i started playing EvE online. Its almost unthinkable for a corporation (guild/clan/ls) to not have a voice com. My corporation has one then my alliance has another one and at the end my coalition has a different one ( coalitions are basically an alliance of alliances numbering to thousands of players). Coms are basically mandatory there for various reasons. Eve made me re think the whole voice chat thing to be honest. If you are form the players that get on an ls and stick with those people for a long time, voice chat will band you together and will make playing, way more enjoying than usual. After 1 and half year with the same corp in EvE we have facebook page, phone numbers exchanged and some of us that are close go and get drunk together. My point is, if you find a good bunch of people voice coms will really make you have an even greater time.

Agreed.

I've found voice chat to be no different than text. You still have people making jokes about each other, you still get people going off to have their private convos (private channel instead of using /tells), and overall having as good a time as those guilds reliant on text chatboxes--provided the people in-guild get along.

Which is why I tend to get a bit irked by people who go out of their way to demonize it.

Whether you like it or not, FFXIV won't have it natively, and it won't be accessible to many console players. Most players won't use it. So they need to be making design decisions with consideration for that fact. Period.

Never confuse your inference as the listener for an implication of the speaker.

Good games are subjective like good food is subjective. You're not going to seriously tell me that there's not a psychological basis for why pizza is great and lutefisk is revolting. The thing about subjectivity is that, as subjects go, humans actually have a great deal in common.

Whether you like it or not, FFXIV won't have it natively, and it won't be accessible to many console players. Most players won't use it. So they need to be making design decisions with consideration for that fact. Period.

I'm not sure MMOs are designed around the idea that people will have third party voice comms, so much as they account for the fact that people CAN have those and there isn't anything that can be done about that.

WoW didn't have native voice chat for a long time (it does now, but it sucks hard). People still used it for raiding because it facilitated communication much MUCH better than text could ever hope to. Most MMOs never bother with it since services like Ventrillo and Mumble handle it much better than an MMO server ever could.

I think there needs to be a simple solution for console players to at least be able to hear, if not necessarily speak, over a voice comm server. But this is another one of those situations where you can't put the genie back in the bottle. VoIP is here, it isn't going anywhere, and people WILL use it. Sticking your head in the sand won't make that not true.

____________________________

svlyons wrote:

If random outcomes aren't acceptable to you, then don't play with random people.

Whether you like it or not, FFXIV won't have it natively, and it won't be accessible to many console players. Most players won't use it. So they need to be making design decisions with consideration for that fact. Period.

I'm not sure MMOs are designed around the idea that people will have third party voice comms, so much as they account for the fact that people CAN have those and there isn't anything that can be done about that.

WoW didn't have native voice chat for a long time (it does now, but it sucks hard). People still used it for raiding because it facilitated communication much MUCH better than text could ever hope to. Most MMOs never bother with it since services like Ventrillo and Mumble handle it much better than an MMO server ever could.

I think there needs to be a simple solution for console players to at least be able to hear, if not necessarily speak, over a voice comm server. But this is another one of those situations where you can't put the genie back in the bottle. VoIP is here, it isn't going anywhere, and people WILL use it. Sticking your head in the sand won't make that not true.

Being as I'll be playing exclusively on PS3 this was a concern for me as well. Wint told me about Vent and Mumble (i think) having smartphone apps that can be downloaded free or very cheap. Though I imagine there are going to be FFXIV gamers out there that are console only and also don't have a smart phone, I would also wager that section is pretty small. Whether it be a large buy-in like a really nice set of bluetooth headphones or just a earbud/mic, there are enough options out there.

I also figure the only time I'm really going to need voice is once I get to raiding, and that will be a ways off. Maybe someone will have another solution by then. I for one would LOVE an updated version of that Logitech PS2 controller/keyboard I had. I believe Wint and Kachi have mentioned owning one as well.

____________________________

Character: Urzol Thrush Server: Ultros FC: The Kraken Club

Outshined

Teneleven wrote:

We secretly replaced your tank wemelchor with Foldgers Crystal's. Let's see what happens.

When I played FFXI on a ps2 (which was most of the time I played), I just used a USB keyboard and never had any issues.

It's not that people couldn't use separate hardware to accomplish everything. Some players such as myself just wish we didn't have to. I mean consoles have many different types of controllers as does pc. Standard controller, kinect, move, guns, guitars, drums, etc. Where is an mmo gamepad/keyboard hybrid built primarily towards the gamepad for the mmo genre?

If mmos are ever going to be mainstream on consoles. The options for voice chat and a true hybrid are neccesary. The larger and persistent a game is, the more communication will likely be needed.

Whether you like it or not, FFXIV won't have it natively, and it won't be accessible to many console players. Most players won't use it. So they need to be making design decisions with consideration for that fact. Period.

I'm not sure MMOs are designed around the idea that people will have third party voice comms, so much as they account for the fact that people CAN have those and there isn't anything that can be done about that.

WoW didn't have native voice chat for a long time (it does now, but it sucks hard). People still used it for raiding because it facilitated communication much MUCH better than text could ever hope to. Most MMOs never bother with it since services like Ventrillo and Mumble handle it much better than an MMO server ever could.

I think there needs to be a simple solution for console players to at least be able to hear, if not necessarily speak, over a voice comm server. But this is another one of those situations where you can't put the genie back in the bottle. VoIP is here, it isn't going anywhere, and people WILL use it. Sticking your head in the sand won't make that not true.

The thing is, you don't need to accommodate the people who will accommodate themselves. You need to accommodate all the people that won't. Requiring, even encouraging an out-of-game solution to an in-game design decision is asinine and frankly, unacceptable.

Personally I've used vent and don't like it. I will probably never use it because it makes the game less fun for me. But if my alternative is just to never talk during combat, I probably won't play at all. And whether they believe so or not, many players will do the same without even thinking it through. People quit games when they're not having fun, often without breaking down the reasons. 70% of new WoW players don't even make it past level 10. One of the major complaints in GW2 was the same thing we're talking about: not being able to chat effectively in the midst of combat. It doesn't bode well, and they should address it.

Never confuse your inference as the listener for an implication of the speaker.

Good games are subjective like good food is subjective. You're not going to seriously tell me that there's not a psychological basis for why pizza is great and lutefisk is revolting. The thing about subjectivity is that, as subjects go, humans actually have a great deal in common.

Call me lame, but I do like immersion (don't kill me wint), and nothing kills it more than hearing some 15 year old kid screaming at his mom...or just hearing people's real voice in general. I'm not a fan.

Now, if it was built into the game, had voiceover effects, and you could select "whisper, say, shout, party" where whisper is telling one person, say is speaking where people can hear you if within say 5-10 feet and shouting say around 20 feet. That'd be pretty awesome. Yes Gridania would be annoying, but so many people would be shouting that it would just sound like a crowded subway or something. could be kinda cool.

Edited, Apr 30th 2013 6:41pm by electromagnet83

____________________________

The entire Universe to the furthest Galaxy, we are told, is no more than a closed electron existing as part of a much bigger Universe we can never see. And that Universe is only an elementary particle in a still grander Universe. An infinite regression, up and down. - Carl Sagan

Never confuse your inference as the listener for an implication of the speaker.

Good games are subjective like good food is subjective. You're not going to seriously tell me that there's not a psychological basis for why pizza is great and lutefisk is revolting. The thing about subjectivity is that, as subjects go, humans actually have a great deal in common.

Call me lame, but I do like immersion (don't kill me wint), and nothing kills it more than hearing some 15 year old kid screaming at his mom...or just hearing people's real voice in general. I'm not a fan.

This.

When voice chat truly becomes "required" is when I may throw in the towel. Fortunately, there are many other like-minded gamers (probably mostly in my age group) who feel the same way.